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November 30, 2013

Harry Potter Is a Danger to Modern Society (In a Good Way)

In his insightful article “Why Harry Potter Is Great Literature,” Brian Brown argues that J.K. Rowling's "Potter books are in the tradition of the great English novels, deserve to be mentioned in the same sentence, and are easily the most morally and socially insightful works of fantasy published in this generation.”

He explains the basis for this claim:

Fantasy appeals to us, to put it crudely, because of the relationship between magic and morality. An alternate world filled with strange and wonderful things, a world defined by imagination, gives us a setting in which to (consciously or not) engage with moral questions free from the complications and biases with which we engage our own setting. This can be blindingly obvious, as with Lewis’s explicitly allegorical Narnia, or more subtle, as with Tolkien’s stubbornly not allegorical Middle Earth. Fantasy, mythology, and fairy tales allow an author to shape our unconscious ideas about what our own world should be like—without beating us over the head with them or even stating them outright. Fantasy stories can tell you a lot about what a civilization values, and the best fantasy stories help a civilization value the right things.

Rowling does both.

Harry Potter is a welcome respite from the Disney story of the boy (or girl) who sacrifices everything to follow his dream, proving his worth and finding fame in the end. Brown argues that the Potter series, contrary to the Disney template, is profoundly countercultural; its characters find their identity in their choices, loyalties, place, prudence, and families—not by pursuing their dreams and “finding themselves.” For example:

Our choices. It is these, mentor Dumbledore tells an insecure Harry, that show who we truly are. No Aladdin-style “his worth lies far within” nonsense here. Over and over in Harry Potter, good triumphs when somebody who has no business being a hero—dim-witted Neville Longbottom, dumpy mother of seven Mrs. Weasley, most of all Harry—makes a choice to be stupid, to “fight the unbeatable foe,” just because it’s the right thing to do.

The full article is worth reading for the rest of the details. Brown concludes:

In short, Rowling (who must clearly be seen as a danger to modern society) seems to think that children find—make, really—their place in the adult world by the strength of their character, by the structures of their connections with the past and with loved ones, and not by “finding themselves.”

Tellingly, Harry never finds a passion in life, nor does he ever have much of an idea of what he wants to do with his life. The very thing most kids today are told to seek—Harry never finds it or even seriously looks for it. He doesn’t need to. Best of all, in almost Austenian fashion, Rowling sets these stories in a school, where parallels with Harry’s day-to-day battles with classmates and teachers make clear that all the virtues that make good triumph over evil are the same virtues that make the difference in real life.

Harry Potter’s is a reactionary world, a real step back in the march of progress. Families and traditional institutions are central, government experts are viewed with distrust, and the celebrity hero doesn’t want to be a celebrity. And likewise unfashionable is the path by which Harry and his friends seek adulthood. They find meaning in responsibility, learn respect for rightful authority, and sacrifice their individuality and even their lives to preserve a very messy world that seems beyond saving.

If you’re anything like me, you tend to feel a little guilty spending time on novels when you have a stack of “serious” non-fiction to get through. This is a grave mistake. Feeding our moral imagination is part of our education (as Joe Rigney argues here). Goodness, truth, and beauty are worth contemplating in story form, so give yourself permission to partake. If Harry Potter, Middle Earth, and Narnia aren’t your thing, find something else beautiful that is. How about one of these? (More ideas here.)

Comments

I think I would take exception to claiming that Harry Potter is great literature, although I can't articulate why. I can't put my finger on it, but I find that the moral framework within the story is fundamentally different than that of both Tolkien's Middle Earth and Lewis' Narnia. I guess maybe I perceive more of a humanistic bent in the Harry Potter series, where I see less of that in the other two.

If the Potter series were good literature, I would be willing to overlook it's flaws in thinking, but quite honestly, it is some of the worst story telling that I have ever had the misfortune to come across. As far as I am concerned, the paper would have been better used to make more of Northern Quilted.

I have read the Harry Potter series and while I enjoyed the writing I was appalled by the moral character of these children. On the surface the story seems like your typical good triumphing over evil. But at what cost? The children, lie, cheat and steal to achieve their goals. They see nothing wrong with hurting someone if that someone is unpleasant. Loyalty and perseverance are good qualities and should be encouraged, but I wouldn't want to teach my children that the ends justify the means.

“The true aim of literary studies is to lift the student out of his provincialism by making him "the spectator," if not of all, yet of much, "time and existence." The student, or even the schoolboy, who has been brought by good (and therefore mutually disagreeing) teachers to meet the past where alone the past still lives, is taken out of the narrowness of his own age and class into a more public world. He is learning the true Phaenomenologie des Geistes; discovering what varieties there are in Man. "History" alone will not do, for it studies the past mainly in secondary authorities. It is possible to "do History" for years without knowing at the end what it felt like to be an Anglo-Saxon eorl, a cavalier, an eighteenth-century country gentleman. The gold behind the paper currency is to be found, almost exclusively, in literature. In it lies deliverance from the tyranny of generalizations and catchwords. Its students know (for example) what diverse realities – Launcelot, Baron, Bradwardine, Mulvaney – hide behind the word militarism.

“Each of us by nature sees the whole world from one point of view with a perspective and a selectiveness peculiar to himself. And even when we build disinterested fantasies, they are saturated with, and limited by, our own psychology. To acquiesce in this particularity on the sensuous level—in other words, not to discount perspective—would be lunacy. We should then believe that the railway line really grew narrower as it receded into the distance. But we want to escape the illusions of perspective on higher levels too. We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own. We are not content to be Leibnitzian monads. We demand windows. Literature as Logos is a series of windows, even of doors. One of the things we feel after reading a great work is “I have got out.” Or from another point of view, “I have got in”; pierced the shell of some other monad and discovered what it is like inside.

"Good reading, therefore, though it is not essentially an affection-al or moral or intellectual activity, has something in common with all three. In love we escape from our self into one other. In the moral sphere, every act of justice or charity involves putting ourselves in the other person’s place and thus transcending our own competitive particularity. In coming to understand anything we are rejecting the facts as they are for us in favor of the facts as they are. The primary impulse of each is to maintain and aggrandize himself. The secondary impulse is to go out of the self, to correct its provincialism and heal its loneliness. In love, in virtue, in the pursuit of knowledge, and in the reception of the arts, we are doing this. Obviously this process can be described either as an enlargement or as a temporary annihilation of the self. But that is an old paradox; ‘he that loses his life shall save it.’"

While non-Christians may permit their child to dive into fiction unguided by parental wisdom so that the child can in and by that exercise "find himself", we must assume the Christian parent knows what this exercise is about.

Worst of all: keep the child unskilled in navigating actuality.

If we fear our child will be devoured by King Arthur's evils, we have not done our job. Such flights ought be mastered by middle school.